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Energy Storage Coalition calls for more targeted support for energy storage in key EU legislation
17
Mar
2023
The Energy Storage Coalition welcomes the latest EU legislation on the electricity market reform and the industry decarbonisation.
In particular:
- The Electricity Market Design proposal to support flexibility through capacity market design and further voluntary support schemes to incentivise investment in storage.
- The European Commission Recommendation on Energy Storage, that encourages Member States to address barriers to energy storage deployment, such as double taxation and lengthy permitting procedures.
- The Net-Zero Industry Act, that defines energy storage as a “Net-Zero Strategic Technology”, acknowledging it as critical to delivering climate neutrality.
What remains to be addressed?
These documents recognise energy storage as a fundamental tool to support a renewable-based energy system, achieve security of energy supply, and ensure that the EU’s decarbonisation goals are reached. But there are still points that need to be addressed:
- Support schemes for flexibility solutions are not mandatory when the flexibility objective described in Article 19d is not met: their implementation is left to the discretion of Member States.
- The creation of flexibility support schemes must be further encouraged, especially where the flexibility assessment shows an important need or where national flexibility objectives are not met by market-only mechanisms.
- It is key to explicitly ensure that Member States do not prevent access to the spot markets to facilities receiving support schemes, especially when these are structured as CfDs, in order for them to bring the most benefits to the grid.
- The EU-wide carbon cap of the Capacity Market remains at 550g of CO2/kWh, which is not sufficient to exclude the most polluting assets and target resources towards cleaner capacities. While the EMD does encourage Member States to set their own technical performance standards and carbon caps to exclude fossil fuel-intensive assets, this provision is not mandatory. This approach, while necessary to account for individual Member States contexts, may lead to different Capacity Market carbon caps across Europe, making it difficult for actors to navigate the market.
The full Energy Storage Coalition response to the latest EU legislation is available here
